My guess would be AV1, on the other hand this is really the space h265 occupies at the moment so maybe they will be effective at holding on to it.
I fully expect AV1 to become the new 'de facto' video format on the web which is the crown h264 has held for ages. No royalties, better compression and wide hardware support coming will make it a very attractive choice.
And as streaming will also move towards 4k+, given that all the streaming giants (Google, Netflix, Amazon) are directly backing the development of AV1 it would surprise me if they did not phase out HEVC in favour of AV1 for all their 4K+ needs as well (Youtube doesn't support HEVC at all).
I don't think h265 will ever be widespread as h264. I am counting on H266, which has an industry formed alliance MC-IF for patents and they include All most of the original H.263, H.264, H.265 members. ( Missing Qualcomm )
Hopefully they will work out a deal and move things forward.
I still consume nearly all of my content in 720p. The bandwidth requirements usually outstrip my need for fidelity. This is especially true when traveling when I don’t have access to my own broadband. It’s easy to get stuck in a place with slow internet services.
Perhaps AV1 will in the loooong term, but as of today h265 is what every 4K Blu-Ray uses and just about every modern device has a hardware decoder. So that’s gotta count for something.
H.265 is a much worse patent minefield than h.264 ever was: the h.265 patents are owned by different patent pools with different licensing terms, some of which even without revenue cap.
The only way to relatively safely produce h.265 content is to be one of these companies in one of the patent pools.
AV1 in contrast is supposed to be free of patents and open for everybody to use. Of course there could still be some patent being violated and there's no legal entity to fight for you if you get sued, but given the mess around h.265, this might still be the better option.
AV1 is backed by multiple soft- and hardware manufacturers, so between that, the free licensing, and the legal murkiness of h.265, this might yet take off.
I certainly hope so. It would be the first time in decades that the best media codec is also patent free and useable by everybody.
I fully expect AV1 to become the new 'de facto' video format on the web which is the crown h264 has held for ages. No royalties, better compression and wide hardware support coming will make it a very attractive choice.
And as streaming will also move towards 4k+, given that all the streaming giants (Google, Netflix, Amazon) are directly backing the development of AV1 it would surprise me if they did not phase out HEVC in favour of AV1 for all their 4K+ needs as well (Youtube doesn't support HEVC at all).